When people talk about sheOne (James Choules), they throw around terms like Legend, Icon and Innovator. Too often these words simply arise from fame or notoriety, the subject rarely deserves the title. In a recent conversation i had with James he eschewed such terms along with the array of "quick fire positives" we see daily on social media in reaction to urban art. 'Sick', ‘Awesome', ‘Next level' etc. "They are meaningless, void of rhetoric”. He has a point. Few really have anything thought provoking or worthwhile to say about the art. On the death of Robert Hughes, Poesia, founder of Graffuturism tweeted, ‘Where are the art critics of our age?’ His echo decays unbroken.

As urban art seeks to assert itself as a serious movement, beyond the cool kids getting complex, it needs artists like sheOne. Artists that aren’t puppets, artists that live and breath their work, artists of conviction. This latest solo show [S1] see’s sheOne attempt to destroy his icon, the legend, built up over the last 25 years. By tearing up his own work and reassembling it he seeks to reassert who he is, the destruction of his tag, questioning the validity of an alter- ego and more importantly, what he now has to say.

In keeping with the theme of the space, his effortless touch is extended to two Dolan bike frames, one skeletal monochrome with trademark sheOne strokes, swallowed into solid black. The other, a speckled desert camo pattern, with an almost organic, eggshell effect. Further references to regeneration, demonstrating life beyond unruly outsider spaces, translated onto functional objects of desire.

On the walls, paper collages of spray painted works, roughly torn and reassembled are undeniably sheOne. Yet they look unlike anything he’s produced to date. There’s a high style, random perfection to them. This is the mark of a true artist, the way he arranges his belongings, the placement of a glass alongside an ashtray, to me sheOne/ James Choules epitomizes Marcel Duchamp’s artist, he who is and does. His touch is his trademark, it needs no pigment or paper, just point.